Snowy-Day Cake

The MOST Incredible Cookie - Part II

A Very Culinary Weekend
Whew! I am exhausted. What a busy weekend it was, culinarily-speaking. I've got two restaurants for you AND two recipes! What more could you ask for? And how about that photo above of the gorgeous maple tree that lives down the street from me? Every year when it starts to turn that deep, beautiful orange, and the ground around it is blanketed with the fallen leaves, I think,

Zucchini-Olive Oil Cake with Lemon Crunch Glaze
Greetings! I know it may seem like I've been neglecting my baking duties (which I take very seriously!) because I haven't posted for a couple of weeks, but I have been busily baking away. I was on this cornbread kick trying to fulfill a special request from a work colleague. And, of course, I was hoping to post about my fabulous cornbread results.Alas, not such good results. Even using a recipe from the grand Dame of Southern food, Edna Lewis. Her recipe produced a bread with incredible texture, but really, severely, lacking in taste. This was so bad it went directly into the trash. My next attempt was with a recipe from

September Plums...
otherwise known as Italian Prune Plums. They are only available for a short period of time, right around mid-September so when I see them, I grab them. These little babies are full of purpley-sweet deliciousness. With beautiful gold flesh, they make terrific desserts. For me, the arrival of t

Fascino - Montclair, NJ
While it is Italian in cuisine and lineage, Fascino in Montclair, NJ is by no means your average Italian restaurant. Set toward the not-yet-totally re-gentrified end of Bloomfield Avenue, Fascino sits back quietly una

Weekend Wrap-up
Well, we never got to the ribs I was so hopeful about last week, but it was one of the most relaxing weekends in a long, long time. There was alot of great food, though, so not to worry.Friday was a terrific opener. After a late Thursday night work-related event in NYC, I was thankful to work from home in the morning; then we took a nice ride through some picturesque NJ backroads in my husband's just-recently-purchased, previously-owned convertible. My new weekend equation: beautiful, blue skies + warm breezes + a convertible = something pretty close to divine. There is nothing better than tooling around on a nice day in a convertib